Kirby and the Star Children
by gothicorca1895
Summary: Who were the Star Warriors? Where did they come from? Why have they all but vanished, passing down their legacy to Kirby? He doesn't have the answers, but he knows someone who does, and he might inadvertently discover the true weight of his destiny...and learn that in some cases, true heroes are born, not made. Based on the Japanese anime. Includes OCs. No pairings whatsoever.
1. Dead Zone

_A/N - This is a rewrite of my now-three-year-old fanfiction, _Meta Origins. _While I still like the basic idea behind that story, it had a lot of issues, mainly because it was written on a whim when I first entered the Kirby fandom. This version will go into a lot more detail with the concepts that should have been elaborated on, and hopefully it will feel more like a full, complete arc this time. As I said in the summary, there are OCs in here, but no pairings whatsoever. Anything that looks like it might be implying a couple is purely accidental and open to the interpretation of the reader._

_Now, without further ado, let's begin!_

* * *

_**Part One: What Legends Are Made Of**_

"Because I was able to speak to her in a language more direct than speech, I could soothe and amuse her when others could not, and a bond gradually developed between us that might be likened to the one that exists between identical twins…"

_- Daniel Quinn, __Ishmael_

**Chapter One: Dead Zone**

Beep…

Beep…

"_Hai_, _hai_," Chuva muttered breathily, swiping a gloved hand across her face lightly. "I'm getting up now." It was hard for her to rise from the soft, sticky cradle of sleep, but as the hibernation sequence continued to peel back from her mind, she opened her eyes and began to blink rapidly. Her head was fuzzy, her usually extra-perceptive senses seemed to have been dulled, and she wished that she had a glass of water so that she could rinse the layer of dry tack from her mouth. But, after what felt like both a moment and an eternity simultaneously, she was awake.

Rubbing her eyes, she turned to survey the environment outside of her starship's glass domed top. An expanse of star-studded blackness surrounded her on all sides, and she frowned, realizing that there wasn't a good landing place anywhere in sight. Besides, shouldn't she have _already_ landed by now? She had always assume that she wouldn't rise from hibernation until the guidance system had safely delivered her to the Galaxy Soldier Army base…

It was then that she turned her attention to the persistent beeping sound, which was emanating from a small screen that continually flashed the words DEMON BEAST DETECTED at her. Beside that was a panel that should have contained a Warp Star, and in fact had at one time, but was currently empty.

Chuva sat up quickly enough to send her still-recovering body into protests, and she rubbed away the spots of dizziness that had formed before her eyes as she began to sift through her memories. Flashes of her last experience before she had been put into this starship leaped out at her. The huge fire-spitting creature, her mother shoving her into these new and oversized clothes, her panic at realizing that her Warp Star had gone missing…_Meta_…

"Meta," she said aloud, but of course there was no one around to hear her. She was completely alone, sitting in the pilots' chair with no companionship and no one around to help her.

There seemed to be too much empty space around her and yet not enough breathing room. She felt out-of-sorts, and she assumed that the absence of her double, coupled with lingering traces of hibernation stupor, was the cause of this sensation. She shut her eyes and cast her awareness out as far as she could, searching for Meta's mental presence, but the cold, resolute silence of the universe offered no response. She was fully isolated from him for probably the first time in her life, and it became a struggle for her to stay calm.

For the entirety of her life, she had been connected to Meta in a way that no one else had been able to fully comprehend. Even when she was by herself, she was never lonely and never alone – a constant stream of thoughts, feelings, and memories had bound her to her double. But now the sector of her mind reserved for him was disconcertingly empty, which meant that he was either unconscious or too far away for her to reach. The former had never felt like this before (if he was asleep and she wasn't, she'd usually get at least some inkling of his dreams); the latter hadn't ever happened to them.

The stirrings of fear in her chest tightened themselves into a firm knot. It was like a dead zone out here. What if she was in the wrong place? What if her ship's lack of a Warp Star had caused it to fly astray, and now she was too far away from the other Star Warriors to find her way back? What if Meta was gone for good…and where was she, anyway, and how had she gotten here, and how long had it been since she'd been put into hibernation?

_Beep…beep…beep…_

And why wouldn't that stupid panel shut up?! That obnoxious noise certainly wasn't helping with her agitation at all.

She paused and took a moment to consider those three flashing words, desperate for something else to focus on. She'd heard of something like this before, hadn't she? It didn't take her long to remember where, as her memories were still more or less intact, only slightly more fuzzy than they would have been after rising from a night of particularly heavy sleep.

"_It is said that when the Star Warriors rise, their vessels will automatically move towards areas plagued by demon beast infestations, so that they will always be able to help those in need."_ Who had said that? It was Toshi-sensei, wasn't it? Well, she and Meta had never bothered to listen to Toshi-sensei, since he couldn't have possibly known more about the legend of the Star Warriors than they did. After all, _they_ were the Star Children! But perhaps he had known something about the ways of Nightmare, and as Chuva stared at that blinking message, "Demon Beast Detected," she grudgingly admitted that he'd been right about at least one thing.

She examined her own body, or at least what she could see of it. Her fingers reached the tips of her gray gloves now, and their cuffs weren't sagging around her wrists; the body armor and shoulder pads that she'd donned at the last minute on that night appeared to fit now, and the chainmail slip beneath them was gripping her torso snugly. Her feet didn't bang around inside their metal-plated coverings anymore. As strange as it was to think of it, she was an adult now, which meant that she had aged during her hibernation as planned. It also meant that at least 200 years had passed.

She had slept away two centuries or more like it was nothing…

And now she was no longer a Star Child, but a full-blown Star Warrior. Meta was, too, assuming that he was still out there somewhere.

She extended her hand towards the still-beeping panel, and as she leaned over, she caught sight of something suspended in space below her starship. It was a planet, and relatively close, too; its round surface, mottled in shades of gold, green, and blue, sloped gently over an expanse that exceeded her field of vision. Something down there must have triggered the demon beast alert. She placed her palm against the noisy screen, and it quieted grudgingly, broadcasting a new message: WARP DRIVE DISABLED. PREPARE FOR MANUAL LANDING ON PLANET POPSTAR, SOLARIS GALAXY, SECTOR 5611.

"Warp Drive Disabled, huh?" murmured Chuva, casting her mind back and trying to recall where Sector 5611 of the Solaris Galaxy was. She had always been good at her astronomy lessons (it was one of those subjects that she and Meta seemed to have a natural knack for) but at the moment, she was having some difficulty with the specifics. If nothing else, she knew that she was a long way off from Planet Azulis in the Cyanical Galaxy.

Warp Drive Disabled. Well, of course it was disabled, since she didn't have a Warp Star. Now she was going to have to pilot a vehicle that she barely knew how to fly, as well as land it without killing herself. Toshi-sensei had also used to say that no one really knew how to operate a starship, and that the Star Warriors would be guided by instinct when their time came, but if she had been luckier and her Warp Star hadn't magically disappeared, then she'd be down on that planet already –

Chuva swallowed. If she had been luckier and her Warp Star hadn't disappeared, then she wouldn't be here right now, floating and hopelessly confused in the middle of nowhere. She would be safe with Meta at the GSA base, wherever that was, and the two of them would be sparring playfully as they placed bets on who would slay the most demon beast. She was frightened and disoriented now that she was out on her own for the first time, and she couldn't allow that. AS a young girl, she had bragged that she would never be afraid of anything once she became a Star Warrior; the time had come for her to make something out of those long-ago boasts.

So she gulped in a breath, clutched the starship's control lever, and assured herself that she would come up with a way to contact her double after she had safely landed on Planet Popstar. Who knew, perhaps she was in the correct time and place after all, and he was down there waiting for her…although now everything felt so skewed that she wasn't holding out much hope for that possibility.

"Look out, Popstar," she sighed, devoid of her usual gusto as she gingerly moved the lever forward. "Here I come."

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_A/N #2 - Just to let you guys know, each chapter takes a while to write and a while to type (I'm doing a handwritten draft first) so this might be updated fairly infrequently. In the meantime, I'd appreciate some feedback! Thanks for reading!_


	2. A Day Interrupted

**Chapter Two: A Day Interrupted**

Whenever the sun rose over Pupupuland, it dyed everything above the horizon an indescribable shade of orangey-pink that looked as if it might be the most unappetizing flavor of juice in the world. It was a color that balanced tentatively on the fine line between abstract beauty and intriguing ugliness, and few enough people in town were ever awake early enough to see it. But Sir Meta Knight had watched that pink transform into gold and eventually sky blue almost every day since his arrival in the country, which was almost eighteen years ago now. Before that, every sunrise had been different, depending on which planet he was on and how long it took to become morning there. It was admittedly nice to be able to ground himself with at least one consistency in his life, even if it was just the inevitable ascension of the sun.

He was always up this early, not because of any desire to abolish sleep on his part (although he did detest laziness) but because it was his job to patrol Castle Dedede and defend it against hostile invaders. He stood out on his favorite terrace, gazing down at the still-sleeping Pupu Village; it looked so distant from his current perch atop this tall stone tower, so helpless. In another hour or two, the townspeople would awaken and begin their daily routines, as would he.

Sometimes, if he was in a particularly stormy mood, Meta Knight would internally curse the villagers for their passive stupidity, for the fact that they allowed King Dedede to remain in power even though they knew that he was cruel and greedy and used Nightmare's demon beast stock as his own personal toy box. But most of the time, the masked soldier simply ignored them, walking into the village and disregarding how utterly out of place he looked, unable to care less about the people who lived there. He had long since mastered the art of not caring much about anything.

He drew in a deep breath. Even though this was the only time of day that the temperature was crisp and bearable in Pupupuland, he was not refreshed, for the air had to pass through his mask first…and it was always lukewarm and slightly metallic-tasting by the time it reached his lungs. There had been a time when he hadn't minded showing his face to the world, but that was long ago, now.

And things hadn't been the same since the Century War.

As he stood out in his solitude, his concentration unwavering even though there was nothing really to focus on, a streak of red suddenly cut across the sky, like a dagger's slice drawing blood in bare flesh. Had the sun been shedding off just a little more light, even he, with his enhanced eyesight, might have missed it. As it was, his eyes tracked the path of the crimson object as it gradually descended behind the horizon. It was falling, he felt certain of that, and it was close enough that it might touch ground somewhere nearby.

He listened hard, anticipating the telltale _boom_ that would indicate a crash, but none came. Strange. Whether that red streak was a nomadic asteroid or yet another extraterrestrial, visitor, he wouldn't have expected it to land gracefully. He leaned against the terrace's balustrade, scanning the village, the forest, and the surrounding countryside, but nothing seemed out of place. No spurt of flame singled itself out, no trees bent or snapped from an abrupt onset of weight…not within his line of sight, anyway.

But now the pink of the sky was giving way to yellow, and it was time for him to begin his first patrol of the day and put the red streak out of his mind.

…

Working for King Dedede had always been a thankless job. The penguin dictator had hired Meta Knight and his two followers, Sword and Blade, for the task of protecting the castle from potential threats and invaders. But at that time, there had been no danger to deal with. No neighboring nations would have bothered to attempt a takeover, and the king's subjects were too cheerfully dimwitted to rebel against the tyrant who ruled over them. Meta Knight's time had been spent treading through the mostly-vacant halls of Castle Dedede, weathering his new employer's temper tantrums and sudden whims. It seemed to him that he half-remembered another lifetime in which he had been content, if not exactly happy, but he never dwelled on that. He was not one to wallow in self-pity, and besides, it was best to ignore the past as he looked towards a hope in the future.

After many years, his routine had been disrupted by King Dedede's installation of the demon beast delivery system – and, shortly thereafter, by the arrival of the baby Star Warrior named Kirby. Meta Knight had successfully survived to see the next generation rise, even if Kirby hadn't been the Nexgen that he was expecting. Now he had someone to train and protect, if indirectly and from a distance. Now he was once again doing what his kind was meant to be doing, taking a stand against Nightmare's menace. The half-emptiness in his mind didn't matter, the things that he'd seen and done during the Century War didn't matter, and the fact that there were days when he felt that he barely had enough to keep him sane mattered least of all. He was giving everything that he had and doing all that he could, and it would be selfish to ask for anything more than that.

Despite the mysterious red comet (if indeed that was what he had seen), today didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary for him. He was striding briskly through the corridors, on his way to meet Sword and Blade in between patrols, his armor clinking rhythmically with each step…and then a bizarre feeling began to creep over him. He stopped up short. It was several long moments before he realized that the strange sensation was not physical but mental, and that it was gradually beginning to come on stronger.

A voice spoke in his mind, faintly, as if his connection to it was weak from disuse. He couldn't tell how far away its owner might have been, nor detect what emotions it carried as he had once been able to do. It only said one word: _Meta?_

He stiffened. Near the end of the war, Nightmare had dispatched demon beasts with the ability to crudely duplicate the mental signatures of fallen Star Warriors, and Meta Knight had seen many of his comrades lured away by what they thought were the calls of their dead doubles. Grief could be a powerful persuasive force, he knew that much. What he didn't understand was why His Majesty Dedede would have ordered such a creature, or why it had chosen to work its tricks on him when he was clearly _not _anguish-stricken. Either way, he would not be easily fooled by a cheap ploy, and he closed up his mind as best he could. The voice was barred out, but its presence still lingered, like a tickling itch inside his brain.

It had been at least three hundred and twenty-five years. He probably wouldn't have recognized his own double's mental signature if it had burst through a wall and ripped the mask right off of his face.

Unfortunately, his common sense didn't change the fact that something had access to his mind. He started walking faster, as if he could shake it with speed alone, but the faceless entity still persisted, nudging gently against his barriers. Its weight on his shoulders made him excessively wary, almost jumpy. It must have had something to do with the crimson streak in the sky, he reasoned. These two things had happened in such a short space of time that the possibility of a coincidence was almost nonexistent.

But what was it doing, and why was it doing it to him?

He opted out of meeting Sword and Blade after his first morning patrol. They were used to the occasional mood lapses that struck him at odd intervals, and they would know not to wait or come looking for him. He needed a moment of solitude, and a place where he could puzzle out the thing making mental contact with him without being bothered. In the almost empty castle, being alone was no grand challenge, and he settled on a quiet little alcove nestled within the space between two pillars, where he sat down with his cape tucked snugly around himself, and thought, and waited.

_What exactly am I waiting for?_, he wondered. For someone to go on a search for him? That wouldn't happen; he was never missed, and besides, everyone knew about his habit of vanishing for hours on end. No one would chide him for neglecting his duties. His services were hardly needed, since all danger originated from King Dedede himself, in the form of demon beasts fresh from the transporter. Meta Knight sometimes warned those who would listen when a threat was afoot, and in the most dire of situations he might even interfere in one of Kirby's battles, but there was no need for that right now. The day was turning out peacefully so far, and no disturbance had made itself known to anyone but him. He supposed, then, that he was waiting for a revelation to strike him. But as the morning wore on and daylight began to chase away the shadowed safety of his hiding place, he had reached no conclusions and was feeling more profoundly confused than he had in quite a while.

When he heard voices moving down the corridor in his direction – auditory voices this time, not mental ones – he stood up and moved back against the stone wall, unsure of whether or not he wanted to reveal himself. Young, energetic footsteps pattered closer and closer. "It's kind of early for a picnic, don't you think, sis?" asked someone who sounded like a little boy. _Bun_, Meta Knight thought.

"We won't eat when we first get there. We'll explore a bit first," replied a girl. That would be Fumu. A chirping response of "poyo" soon confirmed that Kirby was with them as well.

Meta Knight stepped into the corridor discreetly, placing himself directly in their path. "And where are you three going?" he inquired coolly. He never placed much inflection on any of his words; this habit, coupled with his hidden face, made him a very difficult individual to interpret.

Fumu stopped up short, and the wicker basket dangling from the crook of her arm wobbled uncertainly. "_Meta Naito Kyou_," she greeted him respectfully. "We're just going on a picnic in the forest."

He dipped his head in a slight nod. "Whispy's Woods, I'd imagine?"

"Actually, we thought we'd try the woods behind Kabu Canyon. We haven't been there in quite a while, and Kirby's never been there – "

" – so we're going to go exploring," interrupted Bun. "I bet there's tons of stuff that we've never seen before, like maybe some cool caves or something!"

"Poyo!" agreed Kirby.

Meta Knight frowned, although of course they couldn't see it. he didn't like the idea of the children going off by themselves into an uncharted forest, particularly not while they had Kirby with them. The woods behind Kabu were dark at all times of the day, stuck in the shadow of the immense stone idol, and there was nobody around to respond to cries for help if one should run into trouble there. It seemed a likely spot for a demon beast to be hiding, especially one that had been sent without the knowledge of His Majesty. Granted, Whispy Woods was just as easy to get lost in, but at least the children would have the willing protection of the forest guardian there. What they were doing was risky, and he disapproved, but he knew that he'd never live it down if he showed any concern towards them.

"Be careful, then," he stated. "There may be something lurking nearby."

Fumu tilted her head. "Something…? You mean, a demon beast?"

For once, he wished that he was able to provide her with a concrete response, for Kirby's sake if nothing else. He could have let down the defenses in his mind for a moment to see if he could discern the identity of the voice that had spoken his name…but his common sense and self-preservation instincts were far stronger than his curiosity. It hadn't been his double who had reached out to him, he knew that much, and that was reason enough for him to be concerned.

"Just something," he responded briskly, and then he turned and strode off, his cape swirling behind him. He could feel the children's eyes on his back as they stared at him in that typical dumbfounded way.

…

Fumu did not allow her encounter with Sir Meta Knight to deter her from her mission. She was a rather stubborn girl (although she preferred to think of herself as "driven" or "determined") and besides, he was always offering them strange, cryptic advice unbidden. So she would continue on her way and do what she had to do. After all, she was the only one who could.

Although her brother and Kirby weren't aware of it, her trip to the uncharted forest had a greater purpose beyond a picnic and some casual exploration. She was on a scientific mission, and possible outcomes were surging through her head, teasing at her desire for knowledge. As a matter of fact, she was so preoccupied that she didn't realize that Bun was on to her until they were actually making their way behind Kabu, when he declared:

"This is about that red comet, isn't it?"

Fumu paused and looked back at him sharply. They were just beginning to tread through the first ring of vegetation, and with one of her hands still parting a fern so that they could pass, she demanded, "What do you mean?"

"C'mon, sis, I saw it too," he scoffed. "There was a weird red light in my room this morning that woke me up. When I went to the window, I saw a comet!"

"Poyo," agreed Kirby softly, as if to say that he had also seen this cosmic body from his little house outside of the village.

"It's a meteorite, not a comet," corrected Fumu. "At least, I'm pretty sure that it was a meteorite…according to my calculations, it probably landed somewhere around here."

"So you set up this picnic so that you could go looking for it," declared Bun smugly. "I knew it!"

She patted her wicked basket. "We're still going to have the picnic. I just want to do a little hunting along the way. I've never had the chance to examine space rock up close before, so this should be a good experience for me!"

"Rocks aren't exciting, even the ones from space," retorted Bun with an eye roll. "Besides, what if you can't find it? Or what if it's not a meteorite at all – what if it's an alien?"

"Yeah, right," his older sister jeered.

"I bet it is!" he insisted in a singsong voice. "You agree with me, don't you, Kirby?"

There was no response, not even a lone poyo. When Fumu glanced behind her again at where Kirby had been waiting just a second ago, her green eyes widened in shock and dismay.

"Kirby!" she cried. Her shout hardly echoed at all, quickly devoured by the vegetation around them. She hurriedly bounded forward into the tree line. "_Kirby_! Kirby, where are you?! I can't believe that you lost him, Bun!"

Bun reared back indignantly. "I didn't lose him! He was right there a second ago! Besides, wasn't it your idea to come here in the first place?!"

She ignored him. "He can't have gotten far. Look for broken branches or something, so that we can figure out where he went!" With that, she dashed forward to check the nearest clump of bushes, deserting her clunky basket along the way.

"Check for broken branches, yeah, right," muttered Bun, although he scurried away obediently. "It's so dark in here that I can't see anything!"

Fumu parted tree limbs, peeked through the brush, and investigated every hidey-hole where a little pink ball might be able to fit, but she had to agree with her brother. Very little sunlight reached all the way to the forest floor, turning the landscape into indistinct smears of deep green. Had she anticipated this setback ahead of time, she would have thought to bring a flashlight.

After several minutes of frantic searching, Bun called over to her, "Um, sis, does this count as broken branches?"

She scowled as she turned to face him, slapping her hands together to rid them of the accumulated layer of pollen and soil grains. Bun was standing a few yards away, spotlighted by a patch of rare dappled sunlight. "Does _what_ count as broken branches?"

He pointed above his head. "That."

Her eyes lifted to follow his finger…and she gasped.

Now she could see the reason why light was able to penetrate in that area: something had torn through the top of the forest canopy, something that must have been huge, for it had left a trail of snapped tree boughs and desecrated foliage in its wake. Fumu saw places where once-mighty wooden limbs now revealed raw green wounds, and she imagined all of the woodland animals and birds that had been unceremoniously evicted from their homes when the source of this destruction had rumbled by. The carnage stretched out ahead of her in an unnaturally straight path, as if the hand of a giant and casually swiped down and grazed the uppermost layer of the forest. Her heart pumped excitedly, saturating her brain with blood and adrenaline. Surely Kirby couldn't have caused so much damage, so it must have been…

"The meteorite!" she blurted, dashing forward.

Bun stared at her in awe. "Do you think that it passed by here?"

"It must have! What else could have been big enough to do this?" Almost immediately, she answered her own question, though not aloud: _a demon beast_. Perhaps there had been something to Sir Meta Knight's warning after all.

Bun wasn't thinking quite that rationally, however. "An alien," he proclaimed.

She groaned, exasperated. "Enough with the alien stuff already! Come on, let's investigate. Just walk carefully, and hopefully we'll be fine…"

It was easier to find their footing here, in this wide ribbon of yellow sunlight. At least they knew that nothing would be able to sneak up on them under cover of darkness. And they hadn't gone a hundred paces before a familiar pink ball toddled towards them, happily squealing, "Poyo poyo!"

"Kirby!" exclaimed Fumu and Bun in unison, both of them equally relieved.

They'd been expecting their friend to come over to them immediately, but instead he stayed where he was, hopping up and down as he jabbed a stubby arm at the sky. "Poyo! Poy-oo!" he repeated emphatically.

Fumu's eyes lifted slowly, and it wasn't long before she caught sight of something large and silver, its exterior gleaming with almost searing brightness under the full force of the late morning sun. It had apparently become wedged within a cluster of particularly old and sturdy trees, unable to drop or move forward any further. It was not a meteorite. The distinct five-pointed shape and the glass dome capping it were more than enough for her to ascertain that.

Bun gripped her arm. "Woah, sis…" he breathed.

She felt a slight tug on her jumper and looked down to see that Kirby was now at her feet, vying for her attention. "Poyo poyo poyo-poy," he said, obviously waiting for her to express pride at his discovery.

She could only nod. "Yes, Kirby, I see it. It's a starship…just like yours."

Her younger brother began shifting from one foot to the other with an uneasy combination of eagerness and anxiety. "Okay, so, where did it come from? How did it get here?"

"Well, obviously, its pilot must have brought it here." Fumu's eyes crawled over the trail of wreckage leading up to the silver craft. "And I guess that they had a bit of trouble."

"Its pilot?" He took a step forward, mouth still agape, but she tugged him back; there was no telling if those straining trees might suddenly drop their load. "But if it's a starship, wouldn't its pilot have to be a – "

A twig snapped behind them.

That was the only warning they got – Fumu barely had enough time to spin around, grab Kirby's hand, and scream as the armored figure, with its dark swirling cape and predatory yellow eyes, lunged forward with its sword pointed directly at them.

* * *

_A/N - Wow, thanks for all the favorites, follows, and reviews, everyone! I was pleasantly surprised by the reception I got! If you wouldn't mind doing that again for this chapter, please, I'd be ever so grateful. All of your feedback will be considered, so yeah, talk to me and let me know how I'm doing!_


	3. Alien

**Chapter Three: Alien**

The worst part of the landing by far was the reentry. Chuva never would have guessed that planetary atmospheres were such temperamental, fickle creatures, but as her own exclamations of fright and surprise (and pain, whenever she happened to hit a particularly jarring pocket of pressure) bounced around her in her ship's upper enclosure, she had the feeling that she'd be learning many valuable lessons today…and all of them the hard way.

By the time she finally managed to regain some control, it was too late, because she was already skimming dangerously close to the top of a forest bank. A few cringe-inducing crunches and one jolt of whiplash later, she was thoroughly stuck among the trees. The boughs holding her bent towards the ground by centimeters, and her stomach dropped proportionally; but after a solid minute or two, the worst of the danger seemed to have passed.

Not that it alleviated her current situation at all.

She allowed a long whoosh of a sigh to pass between her lips, then groaned, dropping her hands off of the controls. If this was her first test as a Star Warrior, she had just failed it miserably. Here she was, barely out of hibernation, and she'd already almost crashed the vessel that she was meant to have a natural knack for piloting! Remembering that she was a grown-up now, she muttered a few of the swear words that she would have been harshly reprimanded for using at home, which brought some tiny glitter of pleasure to her predicament. What would Meta have said if he'd been here to see this?! –

She started, the thought of her double making her realize that she felt much like her old self again. Could it be…? She carefully combed through the furthermost recesses of her mind, and sure enough, his familiar presence was muted but definitely there. Joyful relief scooped her into its cavernous maw. At last, luck was at least partially on her side, and something was going her way! She didn't have to be alone on this planet that her starship had brought her to! She tapped into his head eagerly, already assembling a barrage of questions and praying that he'd have the answers that she was looking for. _Meta_, she thought at him.

This single word had the opposite effect of what she had intended. It got through to him, but instead of receiving a response, she felt a quick surge of almost-fearful surprise from his end…and then nothing. He was still there, but only faintly, and her follow-up messages seemed to bounce off of a barrier placed solidly around his mind.

Chuva sat back in her chair, dumbfounded. She'd always known that "brain blocks" were among the many abilities that doubles shared, but she and Meta had never used that power before. Why bother? Why would either of them have wanted to shut out their partner for life, their other half?

_Why would Meta do that to me?_

He must have recognized her, since mental voices didn't change as physical ones did. After all, when she had felt him in her mind just before, his "essence," so to speak, had been unaltered by his increased age. So he had to have known that it was her reaching out to him, and yet he'd pushed her out as if she was an invader plotting to do something terrible to him. Something strange had to be going on, because Meta would never do that to her. He wouldn't ever leave her alone…

Something hot and bitter solidified in her throat, and she choked it down obstinately. She was a Star Warrior now, and a grown woman. There was no way that she'd let herself turn into that heartbroken little girl again.

To distract herself, she turned around in order to get a 360-degree look at the place where she'd landed: Planet Popstar. From her current perch, it seemed to be mostly trees, with an open field in the distance and a stony canyon in the opposite direction. There were no people around, and no civilization, or at least none that she could see. So where was Meta? If their connection had been open, then she could have tracked down his approximate location, but that wasn't an option since he'd inexplicably cut her off. He must have been somewhere fairly close, or else she wouldn't have been able to sense him at all, as had happened during that dead zone in space. Since he refused to let her in, she supposed that she'd have to find him the old-fashioned way, with the methods that normal people used.

But first, she had to get out of this starship.

Planet Popstar didn't look too different from her home planet, and it sustained what seemed to be similar trees and vegetation. There was most certainly an atmosphere; her bumpy landing was proof enough of that. But was the air breathable for someone from Azulis?

_Probably_, she answered herself internally, _since Meta is here and clearly not asphyxiated._

She gingerly tapped the glass dome above her head, and it split into halves immediately, as if it were the delicate skin of a ripe fruit and not a vehicle used for interplanetary travel. Both sides began to retract, the seal was broken, and her first breath of fresh air in two hundred years or more entered her lungs. She inhaled tentatively, knowing that if something was wrong, her acute sense of smell would notify her of any anomalies immediately. But she detected nothing except for a regular forest aroma, fresh and piney, with just a hint of dampness and rot buried beneath.

Clean air…she began gulping it down as if it were an elixir of life before she could stop herself. Why hadn't she noticed how stale the inside of her starship had been until now? She stood up, and the tree limbs beneath her trembled in reaction to her shifting weight, jerking her back to reality. If her starship was about to take the plunge, then she'd prefer to be out of it and as far away as possible.

The ground seemed to be awfully far away, though, and it was littered with woodland debris, a layer of slick leaves and sharp rocks strewn across the already uneven landscape. Chuva grimaced. She was still trying to get used to her fully-grown body, and she wasn't at all accustomed to her new weight, height, and bulky wardrobe. Would her muscles retain the acrobatic litheness that they'd held during her childhood, or had her long sleep sapped all of the physical talent right out of them?

With an excess of caution not typical for her, she lifted one foot as high as it would go and planted it down on the interior of the ship. _Clunk!_, went her armor against the metallic silver surface, and the trees swayed in protest.

Something knocked against her hip, and she thrust her arms out before she was pushed too far off balance. Startled, she glanced down and realized that a sheathed sword was dangling from her side. Of course, how had she managed to forget about that? She and Meta had always begged and pleaded for real weapons, only to be rebuffed again and again with the loathsome condemnation, "_No, you're too young._" They had heard that all the time, from their parents and from Toshi-sensei, until that fateful night. Chuva remembered that, in addition to the shoulder pads and the cape and the headdress that had persistently refused to rest anywhere but in front of her eyes (another article of clothing that seemed to fit just fine now), her mother had gingerly equipped her with a newly sharpened sword that was clearly not a plaything…

The surface beneath her buckled ever so slightly, and she figured that it was time for her to get her head both out of the past and out of these trees.

Steadying her body as best she could, and holding her breath as if she were about to plunge underwater, she set her sights on a relatively clear patch of the forest floor and pushed off…

…and mercifully landed on both feet in exactly the spot she'd intended, although the impact sent shockwaves of pain vibrating up through her ankles. "_Itai_," she hissed through clenched teeth. She'd forgotten how much that could hurt without proper momentum distribution.

She jogged off the remaining ache as she headed deeper into the forest. It was very peaceful here, but dark as well, even for her enhanced Star Child vision. Only then did she remember the demon beast alert that had brought her out of hibernation in the first place, and she froze in mid-stride. That was right: her starship had made the decision to bring her to this planet, this continent, and this country, if it could indeed be called a country that she was in. And if she had been transported here to fight a demon beast, who could say that some horrible creature wasn't watching her every move at this very moment?

She strained her hearing to its limits, but only normal forest sounds were audible. Wind scraping against leaves, the scuffling of small animals, and various birdsongs were pretty hard to mistake for a lurking demon beast. She had only dealt with one attack during her lifetime, but she was able to glean from it that Nightmare's monsters weren't exactly imbued with the gift of subtlety. Good thing, too, since she was quite out of practice and in no condition for a battle.

She walked until she came to a little stream, very clear, with small fish flicking about in the mellow current. This place really wasn't too different at all from her home on Azulis. She reflected on her lessons with Toshi-sensei, how she had learned that life in the universe had developed similarly on many different planets. Now, if only she could find some civilized people to point her in the right direction…

She knelt down on the bank and tugged off one glove so that she could splash a bit of water into her mouth. _I should be ravenous_, she realized, _but I'm not hungry at all, and barely even thirsty_. She still felt a bit out of place in her own skin, and the malaise of her double's absence lingered over her like a bothersome ghost, but she was already far down the road to recovery. Not bad for someone who had just awakened from untold decades of sleep.

It wasn't difficult to find her way back to the starship – a hunk of silver metal balanced precariously among the treetops was hard to miss. Chuva was wondering how in the name of the gods she was going to get that thing down when her ears caught an unmistakable pattern of thuds and crunches.

_Footsteps!_

Voice rippled in the air, but any words spoken were unintelligible. Was it because of the distance between her and them, or did the natives of Popstar speak in some language that she didn't recognize? She couldn't quite tell. She muttered a little intonation to the gods under her breath, hoping that they would pass by her starship without incident, but of course that was a shallow hope; as she continued to creep forwards, she spotted two figures, or maybe three, all gawking with their heads turned upwards.

Her eyes narrowed resolutely. That ship was _hers_, damnit, practically the only property she had left, and she would defend it! She lowered her hand to the hilt of her sword. She hadn't anticipated having to use her weapon so soon, but it wasn't as if she was intending to run anybody through. How hard could it be to frighten off a few natives?

Assuming that she was indeed dealing with natives here, and not, say, the demon beasts that her starship had warned her about…

Without pausing for another moment of thought, she pulled her sword from its scabbard in one swift move and bolted forward.

The mysterious figures – three of them, she could see now – screamed and threw themselves out of her path. Chuva dug her heals into the soil, skidding to a halt. Were her eyes deceiving her, or…? She turned around, slowly and unthreateningly. When she caught sight of the trio of "intruders," she released a nervous laugh of both relief and embarrassment. These weren't demon beasts trying to attack her at all. They were just kids.

The oldest of the three, a girl with a neat braid sprouting from the back of her head, squinted at Chuva with a combination of fear and suspicion. She was gripping the hands of two younger boys. One of them looked just as shocked as the girl, despite the fact that his bangs had grown out long enough to cover his eyes completely. But the other one, the round pink one who seemed more curious than anything…why, he looked just like…

After several seconds of tense, awkward staring, Chuva performed a quick bow. "_Sumimasen_," she apologized, hoping that the children spoke her language. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

The girl cleared her throat. "Um, that's okay," she replied, in an accent only marginally different than Chuva's own. "I guess we must have scared you, too." Her eyes drifted upwards apprehensively. "Is this yours?"

Chuva nodded. "Uh-huh. I was trying to land, but, um, the trees got in the way." She shrugged, as if the incident was of no consequence to her. "It could have been worse, I guess."

"Are you an alien?" asked the older boy bluntly.

She chuckled uncomfortably, knowing that there was only one truthful answer to that question. "If by 'alien,' you mean someone from another planet, then yes. I'm not from around here. Oh, pardon me, I should have introduced myself." She grasped both sides of her cape and bent down in a rough approximation of a curtsy. "My name is Chuva."

"Chuva," the biggest girl repeated solemnly, as if reciting an oath. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Chuva-san."

Chuva was secretly thrilled at this display of respect; no one had ever called her "Chuva-san" before. It made her feel very grown-up.

"I'm Bun," offered the first boy. He pointed to his smaller pink friend, who was staring at the rays of sunlight sparkling against Chuva's starship, wholly mesmerized. "This is Kirby. He doesn't really talk much, as you can see."

"Poyo!" interjected Kirby.

Chuva stifled a giggle behind her hand. Oh, that little one was awfully cute… "I'm glad to see that you three aren't demon beasts. Again, I'm sorry for attacking you, but I wasn't sure what to think when I saw you all grouped around my starship."

"About that starship," remarked Fumu. "You wouldn't happen to be a _Hoshi no Senshi_, would you?"

Chuva felt an excited spark come alive somewhere within her core. These children may have been just as alien to her as she was to them, but at least they shared one vital point of knowledge. "I am, actually," she answered eagerly. "You know about the Star Warriors?"

"A little bit – " Fumu attempted to respond, but she was interrupted by an emphatic Bun.

"You're a Star Warrior? That's so cool!" he declared. "Did you fight in lots of battles? Did you kill a ton of demon beasts? Ooh, did you know that Kirby's a Star Warrior, too?"

"Excuse me?" said Chuva, grateful for a chance to spare him the disappointment (and herself the humiliation) of admitting that she had not yet been enlisted into the Galaxy Soldier Army.

"Bun!" snapped Fumu, shooting him a don't-be-an-idiot look that Chuva very well recognized. How many times had she used that very expression on Meta? "Erm, please excuse my brother, Chuva-san. Kirby's only a baby Star Warrior, anyway…"

"A baby Star Warrior?" echoed Chuva incredulously. She had never heard of such a thing before. Perhaps he was a Star Child that had somehow managed to avoid aging during hibernation…? But as far as she knew, all of her kind had been eight years old during that demon beast attack, and judging by the fact that Kirby was currently engaged in pursuing a small butterfly, he really did seem to have the mindset of a toddler. "Well, I'll just have to take your word for it."

Fumu tilted her head. "You mean, you haven't heard anything about the next generation?"

"Look, kid, I'm pretty confused right now. I'm still trying to get my bearings, all right?" Chuva spread her hands out in front of her. "I don't know what's wrong with the current generation of Star Warriors that we need a new one. I'm not saying that I don't believe you, just that I don't understand what you're talking about."

Fumu and Bun exchanged a glance, and Chuva felt a prickling intuition that she was out of the loop with something that they considered to be common knowledge. The sensation both intrigued and frustrated her, and she desperately wished that she had someone more familiar to speak with. Like her double, perhaps…she probed around in her head for his dull presence, but still encountered that mental barrier.

"We're not lying, you know," Bun insisted.

"I never even suggested that you were," sighed Chuva.

"Kirby really is a Star Warrior. Sir Meta Knight said so! And he has a whole bunch of awesome powers, and we've seen him defeat demon beasts with our own eyes, and – "

"Um, excuse me," she interrupted, "but did you just say _Sir Meta Knight_?"

Fumu bobbed her head, making her braid quiver. "He's an older Star Warrior who lives here in Pupupuland. Do you know him?"

In her mind's eye, Chuva watched as Meta bragged for the umpteen-hundredth time, "_When I become a Star Warrior, I'll be so great that they'll have to knight me. I'll be called Sir Meta Knight! And everybody will have to call me by my full title – even you, Chuva."_ Her lips twitched, though whether from amusement or sadness at the bittersweet nostalgia, she couldn't say. "I might," she answered carefully. "I'm sure I'll know him if I see him, anyway. You said he lives around here?"

"Yes, he should be up at King Dedede's castle. It's not too far from here." Fumu had brought her hands in front of her now, and her fingers fidgeted against one another warily. "Maybe if you wanted, we could take you to see him, Chuva-san?"

"I'd be ever so grateful if you did," replied Chuva sincerely, the sentiment of her words far stronger than any of these children could possibly understand.

…

They led her out of the woods and through what appeared to be a darkened stone valley, the primary feature of which was an enormous tiki head that loomed over the craggy landscape. "That's Kabu," explained Fumu, gesturing at the rock statue. "He's an ancient sage."

Chuva nodded understandingly. She recalled seeing something about the Kabus before, in one of those books that Toshi-sensei had assigned to her and Meta as a part of their education.

The entire journey to the fortress known as Castle Dedede was one long barrage of questions and answers, stemming equally from both parties. "Where are you from, Chuva-san?" asked Bun. "Someplace very far away?"

"Oh, yes. I'm from the planet Azulis, in the Cyanical Galaxy."

"I've heard of it," contributed Fumu. "It's nicknamed the Blue Star, right? And it's home to famous blue-tinted ice caps in its northern regions?"

"That's exactly right. It's also home to blue-tinted people, as I'm sure you can see." Chuva cupped a hand against her cheek and grinned. "Even if you know about my planet, I doubt that you'd have heard of where I lived. It was just a tiny little town, barely a speck on the map, named Ulu Village. But pardon me, I feel like I'm rambling. What about _this_ place? I know that your planet is called Popstar, but what about this country?"

"Pupupuland," Fumu clarified. "And most people live down in Pupu Village. There are a lot of foreigners here, so don't worry about being too out of place. It's a cultural melting pot."

"'Cultural melting pot,'" mimicked Chuva. "Well, you're just chock full of information, aren't you, Miss Smarty Pants?" But she said it affectionately, and Chuva smiled a bit.

"Poyo-poyo-poyo!" exclaimed the little one, Kirby, pointing his nubby arms at Chuva animatedly.

Chuva frowned and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her headdress. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know what he's saying. Is your friend speaking some other language?"

Bun guffawed loudly and quickly earned himself a slug on the shoulder from Fumu, who stepped in to elaborate. "Kirby doesn't really talk yet, since he's just a baby, like we said. He mostly just babbles, so no one can understand what he's talking about. Maybe he's saying that you look familiar?" Although this last comment was intended to come off lightly, both her voice and her eyes grew more intense as she glanced back at Chuva again.

"If that's the case, then I have to say that he looks just like someone who I knew a long time ago, but that's beside the point." Chuva stared at the younger girl quizzically. "I have the feeling that _you're_ the one who thinks I look familiar, not Kirby."

Fumu turned away hurriedly. "It's just…your clothes are…and the way your eyes…oh, never mind. You'll see when we find Sir Meta Knight. Speaking of which, we're almost at the castle."

By now, they had come to a small foothill resplendent with blades of lush green grass, from which the building that must have been Castle Dedede was visible. It was squat and rather bulging, putting Chuva in mind of one of those spherical teapots, and its grubby yellow bricks were patched with moss and various other imperfections in the stonework. It was hardly a breathtaking sight, but as soon as she saw it, she stood perfectly still and fixed her eyes on it with great concentration. Her double was there – she could _feel_ it, their metal distance shrinking as they became physically closer together. She could almost sense his presence and comfort that she'd felt so disoriented without in her few hours of wakefulness. They were almost together again…

"C'mon, Chuva-san," called Bun as he and the other kids trotted past her. "We'll be there in a few minutes."

Focusing all her efforts, Chuva pushed against the blockade around Meta's mind. This time, it topped and disintegrated under her will. Success! Before he had the opportunity to react, she sent off a quick thought to him:

_Finally! What's the big idea, Meta? I hope you're not trying to keep me out!_

When his response came, it was tainted with aggression, almost hostility. _What do you want? How did you get into my mind? Who are you?_

_Who do you think, bakka? It's me, your double!_

_I don't have a double_, came the solemn answer. _Not anymore._

A brief chill zipped down her spine, and she hurried to catch up with Fumu, Bun, and Kirby. _Don't be dumb, Meta. I'm your double! I know that you remember me!_

_I won't fall for your tricks, whoever you are. Just leave me alone, will you?_

_Meta, what's gotten into you? _But they were approaching the castle drawbridge now, and she'd finally gotten a solid lock on his location. _Well, I'll be there in just a minute, anyway. See you soon, and I hope that you get your head on straight in the meantime._

But he had gone quite silent.

"…Chuva-san?" Fumu spoke up, and Chuva almost flinched; she hadn't been expecting to hear a voice with her ears. "Is something wrong? You look a little…distant."

Chuva drew in a deep, steadying breath and forced a smile, telling herself to just keep walking, that all of this would be resolved soon enough. "I'm just fine, Fumu," she said, and to the children's surprise, she nudged her way in front of them and purposefully took the lead. She kept placing one foot in front of the other, until they rounded a corner and entered the corridor where Sir Meta Knight stood awaiting them.

* * *

_A/N - A few quick notes:_

_Chuva's full connection to Meta Knight, her polytheistic beliefs, and everything else will be explained thoroughly throughout the story. Trust me, this is not going to be your run-of-the-mill "lost Star Warrior reunites with MK and they have happyfuntiems" fanfic. I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve. However, you'll have to be patient, as I'm going to elaborate on things slowly as I continue to move the plot along._

_Also, you've probably noticed that I like to throw the few Japanese words that I actually know in there sometimes. I'm pretty sure that I'm using them in the correct context, but if any of you Japanese speakers out there spot an issue, please let me know about it immediately and I'll fix it. Translations for this chapter: "itai" means "ouch," "sumimasen" roughly translates to "excuse me," "Hoshi no Senshi" is "Star Warrior," and "bakka" means something along the lines of "idiot" or "stupid."_

_One last thing...only one review last chapter? Um, I know have several followers at the moment, so did you guys just...not know what to say or something? Well, if you'd let me know how you like the plot so far and what you think of Chuva as a character right now, I'd really appreciate it. Any and all feedback will be taken into consideration._


	4. Waking Up Late

**Chapter Four: Waking Up Late**

That one rogue voice in Meta Knight's mind seemed to have initiated a dozen others, all of which had different things to tell him. Some boldly ordered that he should take action against the thing that was invading his most sacred sanctuary, while others wisely advised him to recall the various demon beasts that could produce confounding or controlling effects. The meekest, quietest one, which was bulled to the back by all of the others, cautiously suggested that he might be dealing with a truth, not a falsehood…but Meta Knight would hear none of that. He allowed himself to hold out hope for rational things, such as the rise of the next generation of Star Warriors, but not for utter impossibilities like this.

He didn't actually start worrying until that most overpowering of all the voices told him that it would be there to greet him soon, and the he would see its source in a mere few minutes.

His first thought was to vanish, as he so often did, in order to evade the person or creature that was pursuing him. His second thought was that he was being irrational now, since it clearly had access to his brain and therefore knew where he was located. His third thought was that he was a Star Warrior, and Star Warriors did not flee from impending danger. He was no coward. He was a more than capable combatant, and it would only be right for him to confront whatever had fixated on him and ensure that it was eliminated before it was able to target anyone else.

Then he heard footsteps approaching in the hallway behind him, and he turned around slowly.

At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was Fumu, this time lacking a picnic basket in the crook of her arm. Bun followed close behind her, and Kirby bounced blissfully at their feet, oblivious as usual and thankfully unharmed. But then a fourth figure came into view, and while it was hardly taller than the biggest of the three children, he could tell that it was an adult. A woman, to be more precise.

Her clothing – or her armor, rather – was nearly identical to Meta Knight's own. The same mantle and shoulder pads protected her vulnerable upper regions; the same cape swirled around her same purple-plated feet. Even his mask was mimicked by the obtuse _V_-shape and metal adornments of the silver headdress that she wore. And beneath that headdress, very blonde hair tumbled around a pale blue face, rosy cheeks, and luminescent yellow eyes that seemed to somehow glow of their own accord.

He knew those eyes. The last time he had seen them, they had belonged to an eight-year-old girl, a child who had now clearly grown and matured so that she filled out the uniform that had once been oversized…

"Meta!" she exclaimed, and a gleaming smile illuminated her entire face as she rushed at him.

He tensed, taking an involuntary step backwards. The children might have thought that he was gazing at this stranger with his typical cool aloofness, but in actuality, he was gaping at her from behind his mask. She could figure out as much, since she had already reconnected herself to his inner thoughts and emotions, and she skidded to a halt. "Meta?" she asked softly. "What's wrong?"

Had he been less imbued with such practiced self-control, he might have begun to shake his head back and forth rapidly. This could not be happening, not after so much time had passed. It had to be a shape-shifting demon beast, one of Nightmare's countless petty tricks…but those morphers always slipped up on some detail or another, and _she_ was entirely accurate. The natural progression of her appearance and voice aligned perfectly with his memories, and how could he have ever thought that he'd forgotten what her mental signature felt like? For the first time in three hundred and eighteen years (the exact number suddenly occurred to him) his mind was entirely full and whole, reunited with its long-dormant other half at last.

And quite frankly, the sensation disturbed him greatly.

"Chuva…" he breathed out.

"So, you two know each other?" Fumu spoke up.

Meta Knight stiffened even further, having momentarily overlooked the fact that those three were still in the corridor. "I know her," he stated, trying to restore his voice to its usual unimpeded quality and not bothering to elaborate. Where would he even have started? There were far too many details to sort through, some of which he didn't even understand yet.

Chuva placed her hands on her hips. "Oh, so _now_ you're okay with saying that you recognize me? Why were you playing dumb earlier?"

Fumu and Bun exchanged a questioning glance, and even Kirby babbled quizzically.

Meta Knight cleared his throat. He had to begin the task of organizing everything with Chuva, and he wasn't quite comfortable doing so in front of an audience. "Would you three give us a moment?"

Bun frowned. "What do you mean?"

"We mean, please go play outside or something so that we can talk about grown-up things," answered Chuva point-blank.

_I see that she's still retained her bluntness after all these years._

Bun opened his mouth to protest, but his older sister swiftly interjected before he had the chance to. "It's okay, take all the time you need," Fumu assured them. "We'll just be out in the courtyard. Let's go, Bun. You too, Kirby."

"Poyo!" chirped Kirby, and he followed them as Fumu dragged her rather disappointed younger brother towards the exit.

Chuva angled her head over one shoulder pad in order to watch them go. "They're nice kids," she remarked, as soon as they were out of earshot. "I feel a bit bad about throwing them out like this. Anyway, Meta, where were we?"

They moved effortlessly towards each other, coming together for the first time in far too long.

A buried part of Meta Knight craved her embrace, but…no…he would simply clasp her graceful gloved hands in his own; his dignity would allow him that much. Her expression hovered somewhere between a smirk and a genuinely affectionate smile. "It's good to be with you again," she murmured.

"Chuva, you're really here…I can't believe it." He was still trying to convince himself that she was real. "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

"Well, as I _would_ have explained to you earlier, if you hadn't been blocking me out" – here she narrowed her eyes at him challengingly – "when I woke up in my starship, I was in space above this planet. There was this 'Demon Beast Detected' warning flashing at me, saying that I had to land manually, since my Warp Star was still missing. I managed to get down here, and those three children found me and one of them mentioned a 'Sir Meta Knight,' so I asked them to bring me to you. Lucky for me that you were already here, I guess, and that I remembered that ridiculous name you made up." She took a step back to survey his appearance. "Look at you, Meta! It looks like you've become the hero you always wanted to be, huh?"

_I'm no hero,_ he would have said, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. "Wait a minute. When you awakened above Popstar, that was the first time you woke up? You were asleep the entire time before that point?"

"Yes. I just woke up from hibernation a few hours ago." Her eyes darted around, absorbing the uninviting décor of Castle Dedede. "I'm in the wrong place, aren't I? But then, how did you get here?"

He stared at her. "…you don't know."

"Know what?"

"Chuva…" He struggled to formulate a tactful way to say it, and failed. "You weren't in hibernation for two hundred years as planned. You were asleep for three hundred and eighteen years."

She inhaled sharply.

"Your starship must have been drifting aimlessly through space, since it had no Warp Star to guide it," he continued, times and events falling into place for him even as he spoke. "That's why you were never able to make it to the Galaxy Soldier Army base, or meet up with the rest of us."

"But what about the war?" she managed, some of the blush visibly draining from her cheeks. "The fight against Nightmare?"

"Things didn't go as intended," he admitted quietly. "There were too many demon beasts and not enough Star Warriors."

From both his words and his thoughts, which he could feel her singling out with a creeping presence in his head, she was able to read between the lines. Nightmare had won. Meta Knight may have taken on the noble persona that he'd invented as a child, but the stories that they had once regaled each other with hadn't come true after all.

"What about the other Star Warriors?" she finally asked.

"They did not survive," he replied, and the sentiment echoed solemnly around them, rimmed with hollow desolation and a horror that never seemed to entirely recede.

Chuva swallowed, and bursts of realization moved across her face like clouds swirling past the sun on a windy day. "So that's it, then," she whispered. "I slept through the entire war. I deserted the Galaxy Soldier Army, and I left you alone, and I never even knew it…"

Her entire body compressed as tightly as a spring, her fists and her eyes clamping shut. "What did you even think had _happened_ to me? I mean, after I didn't show up, at what point did you figure out that I was gone for good?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "I just assumed that there had been a problem caused by your missing Warp Star and that you couldn't find me."

"But didn't you feel awful?! I was disoriented enough when we were separated for just a few hours this morning! How did you manage to last for over three hundred years without going crazy?!"

What could he say to that? There were very few phrases he knew that could accurately capture the experience of losing half of oneself, of feeling that one was alone even when surrounded by friends and comrades. Doubles were practically designed to stick together, so yes, it had been hard for him to get his bearings when he had first started out as a Star Warrior; but then again, it had been hard for everyone, as they had all been little more than children thrust into adult bodies back in those days. Yes, he had often felt sickeningly empty and even depressed, but in time, that had actually helped to sharpen his skills instead of hindering them. He had poured all of his efforts into training so that he would not have to think about what had happened to Chuva. He had learned about numbness, discipline, and self control in addition to swordsmanship, stealth, and agility. He had become a knight, had been called the pride of the Galaxy Soldier Army. Unhappiness has faded into the background as a routine, inescapable part of his life.

But now, as Chuva stood before him, he was suddenly struck by a brief, dizzying flash of panic. How much was going to have to change now that she was back? He would have to readjust to her presence, both in his daily schedule and in his own mind. There would never be complete privacy for him again. That hadn't bothered him when they were children, but now, with his much more reserved and secretive personality…?

"Why don't you come to my quarters with me," he suggested slowly. "I'll try to explain everything there."

Chuva nodded briskly. "Fine by me. At least now I know why you were cutting me off earlier today. I guess I must have scared you pretty badly, huh?"

"Of course not. I was simply being wary. You could have easily been some sort of demon beast."

"…you were scared," she insisted, unimpressed.

He stifled an eye roll. Here he was, on the brink of regaling her with a tragic and complex history, and yet they were arguing over whether or not he had been frightened by her sudden reappearance as if they were children again. "It doesn't matter now. Come on, follow me."

"Fine, fine. There's just one more question I want to ask you right now, Meta."

"And what is that?"

"What's up with that stupid mask?"

…

Sword and Blade had not yet returned from their late morning patrol, which was a small relief to Meta Knight, as he and Chuva were able to pass into his bedchamber undetected. He would have to introduce her to his followers soon enough, but now was not the time nor the place. He took Chuva through the sitting are and into his bedroom, where, since he lacked an extra chair, he motioned for her to have a seat on his bed.

"I came to this country not long after the end of the Century War – that's what we call the war between the Galaxy Soldier Army and Nightmare, by the way," he began. "That was around eighteen years ago. I chose to stay because I assumed that King Dedede was the sort of cruel tyrant who might become one of Nightmare's customers, and in time, my intuition proved correct."

"What do you mean, one of Nightmare's customers?" interrupted Chuva.

"Perhaps I should have said one of _Holy_ Nightmare's customers. Nightmare's company deals in demon beasts, sending dangerous creations to anyone who is rich and wicked enough to purchase them. His Majesty Dedede sounded exactly like their kind of patron to me. Therefore, the only thing that surprised me when he had the delivery system installed a few months ago was that he had taken so long to do it. He promptly downloaded a demon beast that began terrorizing his subjects, but that was precisely when Kirby showed up. Pay attention now, because this might get a bit confusing."

"It's already confusing," she grumbled.

"The previous generation of Star Warriors may be gone now, but they have left successors. Many pairs of doubles became…well, romantically involved…and had children. We call their offspring _Nexgens_, short for Next Generation Star Warriors. I had been anticipating the arrival of one of these Nexgens ever since His Majesty ordered that first demon beast, but Kirby was the one who landed here instead. He is, to put it simply, a mystery child. I can't be certain of where he came from, but he's just as much of a Star Warrior as you or me."

She leaned forward. "Wasn't Kirby one of those three kids we sent off? You know, the pink one who looked like – "

"Yes, that was him," interjected Meta Knight. "I have reason to believe that he's one of Nightmare's failed creations, but evil has no persuasion over him. Yet his abilities are far more powerful than those of any other Star Child or Nexgen that I've ever seen. I've taken it upon myself to train him…but I have to do it discreetly, or else His Majesty will figure out what I'm doing and most likely punish me. And so, until Kirby has gained full mastery of his powers and is able to stop a second confrontation with Nightmare, I've pledged to stay here and continue working for the kind, waiting for and protecting the next generation of Star Warriors." He allowed silence to descend, signaling that for the time being, he had finished speaking.

"Aw, is that all?" asked Chuva sarcastically.

"It's a lot to take in, I know. But I've managed to fall into a routine here, so I'm sure that you can, too. If you're planning to stay here, that is."

She exhaled slowly, her lips giving a momentary twitch. "Well, really, where else am I going to go? My starship is kind of…indisposed at the moment, and besides, you're my double. I'm not going to abandon you again."

"You never abandoned me. What happened to you that night wasn't your – " He broke off, frowning. "Wait, what was that about your starship?"

She groaned. "Um, never mind."

"You crashed it, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't!" she contradicted defensively. "It's just a little bit…stuck…in some trees. Oh, but that reminds me of something. My ship made me land here because it said that it had detected a demon beast, but I haven't seen anything like that around here."

"King Dedede hasn't ordered anything, as far as I know. But you couldn't have landed here because of that. Your ship no longer has a Warp Star, so it couldn't have detected anything."

"But it did. It was flashing the words 'Demon Beast Detected' at me. Not much room for interpretation there."

"I suppose not. But there still must be…" He trailed off as a pair of familiar voices began conversing audibly in the common room. His enhanced hearing could detect the sounds even through the thick wooden door, and Chuva's ears must have been just as good, because he saw her sit up straighter.

"Don't be alarmed, Chuva, it's just Sword Knight and Blade Knight," he assured her, then added, "My followers."

"You have your own followers now?" she demanded. He dipped his silver-masked face in a nod, and she made an indistinguishable noise in the back of her throat. "Well, you really have grown up, haven't you, Meta-chan?"

_Did she seriously just call me 'Meta-chan?'_

_Yes, I did,_ she responded smugly, once again communicating directly through his mind, and he was still taken aback to find her there. From now on, he would have to exercise more caution with what thoughts she was able to access.

"I'd like to introduce you to them, if you don't mind," he continued evenly. "It's only right that they should know my double, and vice versa."

"if you say so." She hopped to her feet and began following him out of the bedchamber…

…but they hadn't gone ten paces before she stopped up short. He peered at her over his shoulder pad, preparing to ask her what was wrong, when he recalled that there was a full-length mirror mounted on the back of his bedroom door. And Chuva, having had no access to her reflection for the past three hundred and eighteen years, was gaping at it.

He watched with some amusement as she lifted her hand to her cheek, then experimented with various exaggerated expressions as if to see how they looked stretched across her new, adult facial features. She happened to glance at him out of the corner of her eye and noticed that the fake optics in his mask were surging pink, and her tongue poked out at him. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. I was just remembering how, during the early days of the war when I still thought that you might arrive one day, I used to try and imagine what you might look like as an adult."

She tilted her head a bit, intrigued. "Hmm. Well, do I meet your expectations from back then?"

"No. You were much prettier in my imagination."

She socked him right on the unprotected area of his am, hard enough to make him think that she was underestimating the strength capacity of her fully matured muscles. "Thanks so much, Meta-chan. Now did you want to introduce me to your followers, or what?"

"Right this way." As he led her out, he wondered why he had allowed that comment to slip when it was uncharacteristically snide for him. Perhaps it was just her arrival scrambling the past and the present for him, causing him to forget who he was in small and inconsequential ways. Or maybe, just maybe, his relations with Chuva didn't feel complete if they weren't irritating each other at least a little bit.

* * *

_A/N - I think the only Japanese bit in this chapter was the suffix "-chan," which translates to something like "little" or "dear." So Chuva was essentially calling Meta Knight "Little Meta" or "Meta dear." Oh, don't you worry, he'll come up with a degrading nickname for her later._

_Other than that, this was the first round of explanation, but it's nowhere near everything that will be discussed in the story. You'll just have to wait until later chapters to learn more. Those of you who are kind enough to leave feedback, I'd appreciate it if you told me what you think of Chuva, of Meta Knight's characterization, and of their relationship so far. Thanks for reading!_


	5. By the Gods' Grace

**Chapter Five: By the Gods' Grace**

A very long time ago, when they had first been taken in by Meta Knight, Sword and Blade had returned to the Galaxy Soldier Army's camp and seen two soldiers huddled away in a tent, grasping hands, coming close to one another, and smiling despite the desolation of their current surroundings. Sword and Blade had wondered aloud if the two warriors in question were lovers, and in response they had been informed of doubles, of the abilities shared by the fifty original Star Children, and of the difference between Galaxy Soldiers and Star Warriors. Of course, this had raised a pressing question for them: their new lord was a Star Child, so why didn't he seem to have a double? Neither of them had ever bothered to ask, especially after they had seen the last few pairs of doubles parted forever by violent battles. Sir Meta Knight's "other half" had almost certainly met a similar demise. Still, some things didn't quite add up.

Sword and Blade had often heard GSA members fondly discussing the feats of their comrades who had perished: "At least Sir Nonsurat knows that his double fought bravely until the end," "Jecra and Abeliene, doubles who died separately, may they rest together in the afterlife," "There was a time when Garlude's double Sir Gemini Knight was known as the most innovative member of the GSA," and so on and so forth…but during all of that time spent reminiscing, no one ever brought up Meta Knight's double, said her name, or made any mention of her at all. It was as if the woman had never actually existed.

Also, for as long as they had known their master, there had been days when he became especially surly and brooding. They knew enough to leave him to his own devices when his mood suddenly plummeted, but over time, they had noticed that his "bad days" seemed to fall on the same dates every year. But their respect far overpowered their curiosity, and neither of them was so bold as to directly ask Sir Meta Knight the reason behind this.

They had taken their guesses, however, which was why they weren't sure how surprised they should be that day when Sir Meta Knight strode into the common room and announced that he'd like to introduce them to his double, Chuva-san.

Chuva-san wore a uniform almost identical to Meta Knight's, but her face was uncovered, so Sword and Blade could see from the way her eyes moved restlessly about the room that she was uncertain about…something. Her lemon-colored irises had a luminescent quality that mimicked the faceplate of their lord's mask, but other than that, she looked nothing like him.

_And why should she? Doubles are never blood-related, after all…_

There were dozens of comments that they could have made and hundreds of inquiries pressing at their mouths, but in the end, the default respectful reaction that had been instilled into them won out. In perfect unison, they knelt before her and silently bowed their heads.

"Greetings, Chuva-san," recited Sword carefully. "Since you are our master's double, know that we will remain loyal to you for as long as you are within his affiliation."

"We will provide any services that you require during your time on Popstar," added Blade.

Chuva's reaction to this pledge was not what they had anticipated. She actually seemed more amused than anything else, and proud – of herself, not of them. She elbowed Meta Knight, who was standing beside her, and Sword and Blade imagined that it must have been taking him every last shred of his self-control not to reprimand her for the rudely informal gesture. "Where'd you find these two, Meta?"

"They swore their allegiance to me after I saved them from a demon beast, near the end of the Century War," he replied, mercifully excluding the fact that they had been thieves who'd threatened to murder him.

She nodded. "So they're not Star Warriors, then?"

"No, but I do believe that they were considered to be Galaxy Soldiers at one time."

"What's the difference?"

Sword and Blade stared at each other, grateful that their full body armor blocked their dumbfounded expressions. This woman was meant to be the double of one of the most esteemed members of the GSA, as well as a very honorable warrior herself, and yet she didn't even know the difference between Galaxy Soldiers and Star Warriors?

"The fifty original Star Children were hardly enough to form a complete army," Meta Knight explained. His voice was steady and neutral, not revealing if he found her ignorance to be surprising, frustrating, or understandable. "We hired volunteers, who we called Galaxy Soldiers. They were only ordinary people, you see. They had no special abilities, yet they were willing to put themselves in danger for the sake of universal freedom."

Chuva made a small, contemptuous noise in the back of her throat. "I can't imagine that they were too helpful, then."

"We never would have lasted as long as we did without them, Chuva," he answered sharply, and for the first time, a razor edge poked through his words. "Just because they weren't born prophesized and privileged doesn't mean that they weren't noble, good-hearted people."

She frowned at him indignantly, as if shocked that he would dare to speak to her in that tone. Sword and Blade began to wonder if they had made the right choice in declaring their loyalty to her. Who was she to glare at their lord like this, while _she_ was the one being so insensitive?

Meta Knight quickly abolished all traces of anger from his demeanor as he turned to Sword and Blade apologetically. "I will speak to both of you about arrangements later," he stated. "Right now, I must take Chuva to be presented before King Dedede."

"She's going to be staying here, then?" asked Blade, trying his hardest not to sound disappointed.

"That's what I'm planning," Chuva spoke up promptly. "I don't have anywhere else to go, and besides, doubles are supposed to stay together."

"If doubles are supposed to stay together, then why haven't we seen you or even heard of you before now?" demanded Sword.

He was instantly stunned and ashamed at his own impertinence. Meta Knight stiffened, and Chuva's lips pulled back from her teeth in an expression that resembled a smile, but wasn't. "So," she finally intoned, "Meta never told you about me? Or about what happened to me, should I say?"

"Chuva, we don't have any time to waste," Meta Knight interrupted. "You need to be introduced to the king as soon as possible, or else he'll take you for an intruder and probably send a demon beast after you. And we don't want that, do we?"

"_Hai, hai_," she sighed. "Whatever you say, Meta-chan. Let's go, I guess."

He strode away briskly, and she followed right behind him, her cape drifting languidly over air currents as they vanished into the corridor. As soon as the heavy door had thudded shut behind them, Blade remarked, "There's something unpleasant about that woman."

Sword bobbed his head in agreement, causing his armor to clank obtrusively. "I can almost understand why _Kyou_ never told us about her. Then again, her doesn't seem to have told her much about us, either. Or about anything else, for that matter."

"I wonder where she came from all of a sudden?" mused Blade.

"Who knows?" Sword shook his head. "All I hope is that she normally acts more like a Star Warrior than her first impression suggests…otherwise, I don't know how _Kyou_ will be able to put up with her."

…

Meta Knight and Chuva did not discuss the events in the common room as they traversed the long stone hallways, since Meta Knight was preoccupied with drilling his double in how to behave in front of King Dedede. "We're going to ask if you can be given a position as a guard here, since that will be the easiest way for us to stay close. It's very important that you at least _act_ polite. Don't back-sass the king, agree with everything he says, and try to flatter him if you can."

"You want me to kiss up to a guy who plays with demon beasts?" complained Chuva.

"It's just acting, which you should be good at. I seem to remember that you were always very dramatic."

She was about to jab her tongue out at him, but then she recalled that she was supposed to be a grown-up now.

"Just try not to say anything insulting. And keep that temper of yours in check," he advised as they approached the throne room. "Let's just hope that we're not interrupting anything, or else we'll put His Majesty in a bad mood right from the start."

The entryway before them was immense, several times higher than either of them was tall, and yet the doors parted instantly as soon as Meta Knight placed a hand on them. Chuva assumed that he must have been a lot stronger than he appeared, his muscles fortified from a century of vicious physical conflicts. _So Meta-chan grew up_, she thought to herself. For some reason, this caused a sense of malaise to fall over her, and she wasn't entirely sure why.

Meta Knight must have misinterpreted the uneasiness penetrating her aura, because he turned to her and quietly asked, "You're not nervous, are you?" She shook her head.

He slipped into the throne room, and she stayed where she was, waiting tensely for him to signal her. She could hear his muffled voice, so overly calm and unimpeded, but whoever was responding to him was out of her range of hearing. Finally, his mental voice spoke up in her brain. _You can come in now,_ he told her, and she shouldered the doors open without another thought, making a slightly sloppier entrance than he had.

As its entryway suggested, the room was enormous, high-ceilinged and lined with vaulted brick columns. Its décor aligned with the rest of what she'd seen in the castle so far. But the first thing to really grab her attention was King Dedede himself, who was seated on a rather plain throne some distance away from her. She decided that even if she hadn't known in advance that he was a cruel, greedy dictator, she wouldn't have liked him. He was such a fat blue lump of lard, and the way that he was gazing at her with a sickening grin plastered upon his beak…he was like a mischievous child pondering how he would go about breaking one of his toys.

"_Heika_," Meta Knight addressed the penguin ruler, "this is Chuva. She's an old acquaintance of mine."

Chuva performed a mock curtsy, just as she had for the three children in the forest. She didn't trust herself enough to speak, since there was no way that she'd sound as collected as her double.

King Dedede laughed delightedly – or really, it might be more accurate to say that he emitted an unkind, raspy cackle. "She's your girlfriend, you mean!" he declared.

"Of course she is," agreed the only other person in the room, someone of a mollusk-like species who was standing by the throne. His air of self-importance suggested that he might have been an advisor to the king, or at least the holder of a position higher than simple servitude.

Meta Knight remained Chuva, and Chuva bent her lead low in order to hide her unavoidable eye roll. She had always loathed the people who were too dense to understand how the relationship between doubles worked, and so assumed that she and Meta would grow up to be an item. Now that they were actually adults, it was even worse.

When he had finished sniggering, King Dedede said, "Now, what exactly do you want from me, little girl?"

Even as she opened her mouth to reply, Meta's presence came creeping in and planted the proper statements into her mind. "I'd like to inquire about getting a position as a guard in this castle…if you would be so gracious and kind as to grant such a privilege, _Heika_," she added with artificial cheeriness.

"Hmm…" Dedede grinned wickedly and scraped a hand along his flabby chin. "Maybe I will, or maybe I won't. How do I know that you've got what it takes, girlie? I'm not going to give you a job just because you're Meta Knight's girlfriend!"

"I'm actually not his – " she started.

"She is a very capable warrior, _Daio-sama_," Meta Knight cut her off. "You could scarcely ask for better."

Chuva shot him a biting glance. As much as she normally would have basked in the compliment, she had no real combat experience, just her old training…which meant that she hadn't done anything resembling fighting in about three hundred and eighteen years.

The snail advisor at the arm of the throne sniffed pretentiously. "Prove it, then."

"With what?" demanded Chuva, so aghast that she abandoned her submissive façade. "Do you really want me to attack you just to prove a point?"

_CHUVA!_ scolded Meta Knight's mental voice.

At that moment, however, a small, round creature balancing a ceramic serving set on its head approached King Dedede. The creature must have been a servant, and judging by its blank, unintelligent eyes and mouthless face, it wasn't the sort to protest against waiting hand and foot on such a spoiled king. Dedede smirked and plucked a dainty saucer from the attendant's tray, squeezing it in his beefy fingers without a trace of finesse. "Think fast!" he bellowed, and he swung back his arm to hurl the dish directly at Chuva.

The hilt of her sword seemed to leap into her hand of its own accord, as if two powerful magnets had suddenly formed a connection and snapped together. She was no longer aware of conscious thought as the saucer zoomed towards her face, and the business end of her weapon was slashing upwards before she had even fully comprehended what was happening. The little plate exploded into shards that pattered around her like a momentary shower of porcelain rain. She blinked, mildly surprised that her reflexes seemed, if anything, more precise than they had been before.

Dedede snickered triumphantly at the entertainment. "Good show, girlie!" he exclaimed.

Meta Knight appeared to be unperturbed by this turn of events, and Chuva belatedly realized that he had snuck some of his own abilities through their mental link. If he hadn't been providing her with his skill, then she never would have been able to block the projectile so quickly.

"Now what did you say your name was, again?" asked the king.

Chuva bowed. "My name is Chuva, Your Majesty."

"All right then, Chuva," he sneered, making her own name sound like a taunt. "I'm in a generous mood today, so I guess I'll go ahead and give you that position working with your boyfriend. And as an added bonus, I'll even promote you to the same level as him! We can call you, uh…Lady Chuva Knight!"

"Lady Chuva Knight," she repeated quietly. True the title would have meant a lot more had it been bestowed upon her by the head of the GSA, as opposed to a despicable dictator who really had no right to be in power, but it was something, anyway. She wondered if women were even supposed to be called knights, or if she should have been given a different, more appropriate title.

"My thanks, _Heika_," she said more loudly, making her face as admiring and innocent as she possibly could.

"Yeah, yeah, no need to thank me," he retorted dismissively. "I already know how great I am. Now, get out of here. You too, Meta Knight."

Meta Knight performed one last bow for good measure, before turning to lead his double out of the throne room. As she stepped out into the corridor, Chuva could have sworn that she heard the king's mollusk advisor mutter, "Do you really think that was a good idea, Your Majesty?" But then the massive doors banged shut behind her, and she reached up to clutch at her throat in a theatrical parody of a gag.

"I hope you appreciate the things I do for you, Meta, because sucking up to that guy was awful. I mean, _really_ awful," she proclaimed.

"Nonsense, you've done far worse," said Meta Knight. "You're just lucky that he was in a semi-decent mood." His eyes drifted in her direction, and she frowned, sensing a strange tenseness radiating from him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry." He averted his gaze. "I suppose that it's just difficult for me to…I still can't believe you're really here."

She softened, reaching out to place a hand on his arm, and he only barely managed to avoid flinching away. "It does seem like a huge coincidence that I made it here after all this time, doesn't it? Or maybe the gods wanted us to be together again."

A small noise vibrated in the back of his throat, something close to a scoff.

"What is it now?"

"You don't really believe in that trite, do you? About divine intervention?"

She was appalled. "It's not trite! And what, are you saying that you _don't_ believe in the gods anymore?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "I am skeptical about it," he admitted. "After all, if the gods had wanted us to be together, then why did they send you away in the first place?"

"That's not how it works, and you know it. Just because they're gods doesn't mean they're perfect, or that they have infinite time to help every single person who asks. Didn't Toshi-sensei have a saying about that?"

"'The gods help those who help themselves,'" recited Meta Knight in an overly grave cadence. "There. Was that enough like Toshi-sensei for you?"

"Yeah, and you could pass for him very well now, grumpy Meta-chan," giggled Chuva, before continuing on their previous topic. "Besides, the fact that we were born – that any of the Star Children were born at all – proves that the gods exist and that they truly care about the universe. Doesn't it?"

"I suppose," he replied, sounding unconvinced. "But if you had seen some of the things that I saw during the Century War, then perhaps you would wonder, as I do, if the gods really find our well-being to be of any significance, or if they merely created us to watch us fall."

She shivered a bit, mostly from what this statement implied about his character.

"Listen, I'd like to have a talk with Sword and Blade…privately," he changed the subject hastily. "Why don't you go ahead and take a look around the castle? As long as I'm here, you won't get lost."

"I don't know…" Her curiosity and suspicions about this spooky building batted around in her head, at odds with each other. "You'll be all right on your own?"

"Chuva, I am more than capable of taking care of myself. Honestly, I should probably be more concerned about you, but I'm not. You're a grown woman now."

A thought occurred to her. "Meta, what ever happened to those three kids we sent off?"

"Fumu, Bun, and Kirby? Fumu and Bun are the Cabinet Minister's children, so they might be in their quarters. Kirby could have gone home to the village, or perhaps all three of them went off somewhere together. I 'm not sure, it's not my job to look after them. Why?"

"Well, they must be very confused." Chuva began to trot off down the corridor, all of her fears abated at once. "I thought that maybe I'd go and explain things to them…"

* * *

_A/N - One of my reviewers brought to my attention that some of you many not know how to pronounce Chuva's name. It's CHOO-vah, okay? Not "Chuh-vuh."_

_Japanese for this chapter:  
"Kyou": a title of honor. Used here in the place of "sir."  
"Heika": a title for Japanese royalty. In this show, I've seen it translated as both "sire" and "Your Majesty" but I like Your Majesty better.  
"Daio-sama": means "Great King" (I think).  
The suffix "-san" is used in place of Miss, Mister, or Missus._

_Also, next chapter begins Part II! Yay, Part II, and I've still barely explained anything!_


End file.
